A Theological Engagement with the Science of Science Skepticism

When Christians reject the claims of scientific experts, are they being irrational? Much of recent discussion in scholarly and popular media have discussed science denialism by conservative Christians, linking a low view of scientific expertise to the United States’ current political turmoil. This paper will focus on scientific explanations of science skepticism, asking whether there is anything unique to religious communities that make them vulnerable to misinformation.

The Prodigal Doubter (Nauen 1911–12)

This chapter explores sermons from Tillich’s curacy in Nauen (1911–12). In Tillich’s adaptation the parable of the Prodigal Son, the pious of the day do not come with empty hands but grasping rags of love, faith, zeal, and orthodoxy. By characterizing the creedal assent of the pious as a self-righteous ‘work’, Tillich echoes Wilhelm Herrmann’s defence against ‘positive’ detractors. Tillich will speak sharply against provocatively liberal figures but distances himself from conservative Christians he deems self-righteous. Tillich attempts thereby a levelling of the distinction between the believer and the unbeliever through a law-gospel dialectic emphasizing human inability. Reimagining piety as piety in godforsakenness, he insists that even in an age of doubt, all share in the predicament from which all are saved. Those who now protest against the church do in that protest exhibit forms of faith: they are of the truth and will come to the truth.

The Politics of Fertility: The Global Emergence of 'Pro-Family' Organisations

<p>This thesis is part of a small but growing literature on the activism of Christian Right 'pro-family' organisations from the United States (US) in international development politics. This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the texts of five globally active 'pro-family'organisations from 1997 until the end of 2008. One of the major findings is that the 'pro-family' political project, previously defined as the defence of the family against powerful global elites, is now being articulated against values associated with industrialisation and modernity. Through this change, longheld Christian Right tenets such as hostility to feminism, staunch adherence to free markets, and suspicion of the UN, are being reconsidered or redefined to suit the needs of the 'pro-family' movement. By mapping the ways that 'pro-family' discourse is changing, this thesis shows the impacts that globalization and involvement at the UN is having on this set of conservative Christians, and how their agenda is changing as a result of their political activism outside of the US. This thesis provides a current, comprehensive and reliable review of the activist publications of the US 'pro-family' movement, and as such, offers an insight into the changing agenda of a movement that is growing both in organisational aptitude and in global influence.</p>

The Politics of Fertility: The Global Emergence of 'Pro-Family' Organisations

<p>This thesis is part of a small but growing literature on the activism of Christian Right 'pro-family' organisations from the United States (US) in international development politics. This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the texts of five globally active 'pro-family'organisations from 1997 until the end of 2008. One of the major findings is that the 'pro-family' political project, previously defined as the defence of the family against powerful global elites, is now being articulated against values associated with industrialisation and modernity. Through this change, longheld Christian Right tenets such as hostility to feminism, staunch adherence to free markets, and suspicion of the UN, are being reconsidered or redefined to suit the needs of the 'pro-family' movement. By mapping the ways that 'pro-family' discourse is changing, this thesis shows the impacts that globalization and involvement at the UN is having on this set of conservative Christians, and how their agenda is changing as a result of their political activism outside of the US. This thesis provides a current, comprehensive and reliable review of the activist publications of the US 'pro-family' movement, and as such, offers an insight into the changing agenda of a movement that is growing both in organisational aptitude and in global influence.</p>

Conservative Christian Persecution Discourse and Support for Political Violence: Experimental Evidence from the United States

International Relations scholarship on religious freedom points to religious persecution as a major driver of political violence around the globe. If correct, the perceived persecution of conservative Christians in the United States (U.S.) may contribute to the radicalization of individuals who self-identify as conservative and Christian. Yet, in focusing on country-level indicators, previous empirical research on the “religious freedom peace” is generally silent on the role of individual-level perceptions in the formation and mobilization of grievances. This article represents a first attempt to fill this gap. As such, it asks if the religious freedom discourse articulated in conservative American media contributes to the radicalization of its domestic consumers through the cultivation of perceptions of persecution that are divorced from the generally high levels of religious freedom otherwise experienced in the U.S. Although the results of an original online survey experiment demonstrate that persecution discourse does indeed shape perceptions of threat to religious liberty, I find no support for the idea that it also leads to increased support for political violence, either directly or indirectly through misperceptions of persecution.

Popular cultural representations of postfeminist religiosity in the international christian fellowship: an analysis of the “Ladies Lounge 2021” webpage

Femininity and female gender roles in conservative religious environments are highly disputed topics both within communities of faith and in sociological discourse. In light of social transformations of gender perceptions in the past decades, conservative Christians have had to reevaluate traditional understandings of womanhood in societies that have become steeped in popular culture and thoroughly mediatized. Taking this development as a point of departure, this article examines how femininity is represented in the International Christian Fellowship, particularly on its “Ladies Lounge” webpage. Advertising an annual event geared exclusively towards women, the website’s landing page contains images and text that we examine by means of visual and textual sequence analysis. Our research results reveal that women are depicted as sensually attractive and self-confidently professional while at the same time being relegated to an exclusively female sphere within (but not beyond) which they wield authority and influence. As such, femininity is represented as self-empowering, but only within a specific, postfeminist framework. This ambivalent depiction of women’s agency challenges conservative Evangelical values at the same time as it affirms them. In this sense, the study contributes the growing body of literature on gender and Evangelicalism.

The Trump Prophecies and the Mobilization of Evangelical Voters

The Evangelical vote played a major role when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Although various factors may explain this result, we should not overlook the influence of the alliance that emerged between Trump and leading Evangelicals during the campaign. In this article, I present four books written before and after the election that illustrate how Trump prophecies and the portrayal of Trump as a national savior were used deliberately to convince conservative Christians that voting for him was their religious duty. With the help of framing theory, I analyze this rhetorical strategy of Trump’s allies, and show how it not only has influenced Christian voters, but also the president himself

Epilogue

In the twenty-first century, descendants of segregationist Christians began pursuing the racial justice their forebears had fought. In a reversal of the biblical interpretations that segregationist Christians promoted a half-century earlier, these latter-day conservative Christians embrace racial diversity as a biblical command. But these contemporary evangelicals promote racial justice through individual heart changes, reconciled relationships, and appeals to colorblindness, the tools fashioned and utilized by their segregationist forebears precisely to avoid the racial justice their descendants now seek. Despite a growing number of conservative white Christians professing a desire to solve the problem of race, they are hindered in such efforts by the colorblind theology they inherited from their segregationist forebears.

The American Cyrus: How an Ancient King Became a Political Tool for Voter Mobilization

During the 2016 presidential election, Evangelical supporters of Donald Trump presented him as a modern version of the ancient King Cyrus of Persia. To many conservative Christians, the comparison offered a justification of voting for a candidate whose character supposedly was at odds with their Christian virtues. Subsequent to his inauguration, the idea of Trump being an American Cyrus continued to develop and circulate. It is the aim of this article to deepen the understanding of Cyrus as a political tool in the West and explain how he ended up as a means to mobilize American voters. With an emphasis on the last 250 years, the article looks at how various personalities have been compared to Cyrus or presented as modern Cyruses. Based on these examples, it develops a typology, arguing that the modern Cyrus can be best understood as different types and subtypes, of which several have been applied to Trump. The article demonstrates how the various subtypes have separate evolutionary lines, which in turn can be attributed to different goals and functions.

Abstinence-Only and the Struggle to Define Sex Education

As Chapter 5 argues, conservative Christian abstinence-only advocates learned a great deal from the liberal Protestants and comprehensive sexuality education they rejected. This phase of sex education, often defined by the struggle between competing versions of sex education, began with the emergence of abstinence-only education in the 1980s. After years of opposing sex education, conservative Christians like Tim LaHaye developed their replacements. Supported by—and supporting—the newly developed Christian Right and the evangelical pro-family movement, these programs espoused chastity before marriage and omitted information on contraceptive benefits and the diversity of sexual behaviors and identities. It was no longer a question of whether sex education belonged in schools, but rather which type would be taught. Conservatives, too, had learned how to translate religious values into secular spaces in order to gain a bigger audience for their concerns and values.